Doug Finke: No reason for sites to close? Maybe, maybe not

Friday

Sep 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 26, 2008 at 7:25 AM

Both the House and Senate have voted to restore more than $200 million in cuts that Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH made to the budget he was sent back in May. Just as important, both chambers approved money to pay for that spending. So as of now, there is no reason for two dozen state parks and historic sites to close at the end of November, and there’s no reason for more than 300 state workers to lose their jobs.

Doug Finke

Both the House and Senate have voted to restore more than $200 million in cuts that Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH made to the budget he was sent back in May. Just as important, both chambers approved money to pay for that spending. So as of now, there is no reason for two dozen state parks and historic sites to close at the end of November, and there’s no reason for more than 300 state workers to lose their jobs.

Ah, but just because there’s no reason for it to happen doesn’t mean it won’t. On the same day the budget restorations passed the General Assembly, the Blagojevich administration put out a statement that the lagging economy could cost state tax collections another $200 million by June 30. Odd, since the administration’s never seen fit to make that kind of statement before.

Blagojevich has also decided that about $50 million in revenue lawmakers approved to pay for the spending may be off limits.

Between those two developments, you should get the picture. Lawmakers thought they solved a problem, and now Blagojevich is going out of his way to say they haven’t. A lot of people think he’ll go ahead with the closures and layoffs anyway.

Just because he can.

--The Senate last week gave the final votes to restore those budget cuts. There were actually two separate votes. One was on a bill to spend money for things like keeping parks and historic sites open. The other was on a bill to pay for that spending by taking money out of special purpose state funds.

The bill to spend money passed on a 55-0 vote. The bill to pay for that spending passed on a 40-15 vote. In other words, 15 senators lined up to spend money, but took a pass when it came time to pay.

All 15 of these profiles in courage are Republicans. Aren’t they supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility?

--It’s been a week, and it’s still hard to believe the Senate actually approved that bill to ban campaign contributions from large state contractors. Like the House, the Senate rejected all the additional ethics provisions Blagojevich added to the bill, in a move critics contended was aimed at killing the contribution ban. If Blagojevich was once again counting on his pals in the Senate to bail him out, he was sorely disappointed.

The major overhaul of the ethics bill was part of Blagojevich’s “Rewrite To Do Right” effort, in which he added stuff to bills that he couldn’t get passed on his own. Almost all of that was killed by lawmakers as part of their “Reject the Defect” effort.

--Blagojevich isn’t giving up on his other ethics ideas, like changing how lawmakers vote for their pay raises and banning legislators from holding most other government jobs while in the General Assembly.

That last one caused some confusion at a Senate committee hearing last week because it’s not a blanket ban. Some outside government jobs would be ok.

CINDI CANARY, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, said that sort-of ban on double dipping could raise some legal issues about which jobs are prohibited and which are not.

“You can be a teacher, but you couldn’t be, say, a brain surgeon at Cook County Hospital and a legislator,” Canary said.

Not that being a brain surgeon is likely to ever be an issue in the General Assembly.

--All of Blagojevich’s ethics ideas were put together in one bill that was later steamrolled out of the Senate. That’s a shame because at least one of them -- requiring lawmakers to vote “yes” if they want a pay raise -- has undeniable merit and should be passed.

Instead, it’s lumped with other with other stuff, some of which may have genuine legal problems. It’s a dream situation for the Hypocrite Caucus. “I’m all for ethics, but I have serious concerns about this one issue so I have to vote against the whole package.”

A solution would be to put the ethics changes into separate bills and take votes on each of them. That way there’s no cover. Don’t like a particular ethics idea, vote against that idea and then try to explain why it is a bad idea.